Legal position of the ecological organization and non-governmental organization in the investment and construction process – selected issues

Abstract

This article presents the issue of the legal status of two entities with the rights of a party, i.e. a social organization within the meaning of the Code of Administrative Procedure and an ecological organization within the meaning of the Environmental Protection Act, and the analysis covers the legal position of these entities in selected, most frequently conducted types of administrative proceedings in the scope of the investment and construction process. The catalogue of these proceedings in this publication includes proceedings concerning: 1) issuing a decision on environmental conditions, 2) issuing a decision on the conditions of development and land development or a decision on the location of a public purpose investment, 3) issuing a decision on a building permit, 4) obtaining water law approvals. In each of these proceedings, the legal situation of both of the above entities is outlined differently depending on the specific circumstances of the given case. In some proceedings, both ecological organizations and social organizations will be able to participate, in others only one of them, and in still others the participation of an entity representing a social factor will be completely excluded. In each of these proceedings, a given organization will have a specific catalog of rights and will be burdened with specific obligations, and the scope of these rights and obligations will also depend on the type of proceedings. An analysis of the legal positions of these organizations will therefore show the scale of their diversity in the Polish legal system.